Salmon and Souvlaki

For Kaitlyn and Grace, I made soft color books.  I made one of these for Nik’s nephew last year but modified the idea quite a bit this year.  My favorite innovation is the hand-embroidered words on the front and back.  I’d never done hand-embroidery before and it was a fun way to enter the embroidery world.  I actually did much of this embroidery on the drive to our 37-week midwife appointment – and in a sports bar while Nik watched the US Open final (on the same day).  So yes, Jon and Rachel, I sewed your kids’ books in a bar.  Blame it on Nik! 🙂

I especially like the pink and brown pages and the blue and orange pages together are for Nik.

(And yes, this means that I had 34 fabrics, four each of red, orange, green, blue, brown, yellow, pink and purple plus two black and white prints, in my stash.  I didn’t have to buy any fabric in order to make these books.  This is partly because I made this project last year for Alex and partly because I just have way too much fabric!)

Last year, Noah got an electric guitar for Christmas so this year I made him a patchwork guitar strap cover, from this tutorial.  I heard that his favorite color was green so I chose a bunch of green fabrics, put them all in a bag, and pulled them out randomly to piece the patchwork strip.  I knew that I would have otherwise obsessed over the arrangement of the fabric and it would have taken me forever.  I’m actually a big fan of the random piecing method now – very fast and it turned out really well!  I also wasn’t sure if a 10-year old would think that this sort of thing was cool but he approved!

I especially like these trees.

For Addie (who is 4) I made her name in felt letters for her to hang over her bed – or whatever she wants!  I took the idea from this post but stitched them on machine instead of by hand and made them slightly bigger.

I want to make a set of these with all the letters of the alphabet for Ellie!

For Nik’s brother and sister-in-law, I made a wood-carrying tote and a gathered clutch purse.  I added the words in wool felt, in case Andreas forgot what it was for! 🙂  I also especially love how I was able to cut the fabric so the bird is in the middle of the back of the clutch.  These were both really fun projects.

For Jonas (who’s six), I made him a “trinket keeper” for him to carry around his “treasures and Legos” (Jonas’s words).  He told me that his favorite color was dark green and that his favorite animals were bugs and bunnies and crocodiles.  I managed to find some bugs for him anyway.  I ended up using D-rings instead of grommets.

“I want a wittle cup to fit a real life dragonfly in it in the pouch.”  (That’s what Jonas wants to use this for evidently.)